She's GOT IT! yeah, baby, she's got it...

Okay, Sarah, it's all you! Not just because you were sharp enough to snap up a free copy when you had the chance, but because you were exactly the kind of person I was hoping would win: the kind of person who knows how to sweet-talk a tired editor.

Yes, I just lugged the new baby upstairs. And just in the nick of time. The postal rates go up in a few weeks, and my mother-in-law is taking us out of town at the end of the month to celebrate her 70th birthday. And by out of town, I mean Disney World for a week and a half. And if I spelled that wrong and you're Disney-nerd enough to know what I should have typed, I need you to go and bury yourself in the desert somewhere, please, because I already live with a man who is so nerdarific that it causes him actual physical pain if I refer to anyone who works at any Disney park as anything but a "cast member." I mean, like, even if it's a janitor or something.

So they're dragging me -- I mean, we're setting off in a week or so, and yes, I'm bringing work with me. More about that later. Right now I have to go and stick about forty skillion stamps on forty blahillion envelopes.

Sarah -- drop me a line! Send me your addy!

deborah at 2ds dot org

Waiting-for-the-baby giveaway

(No, I'm not pregnant. Not even a little.)

The new issue of the magazine should come home Tuesday (cross fingers).

However, my husband is going out of town tomorrow (Monday), and won't be back until Friday.

Although I can do much of the label-printing myself -- all the orders that come in between issues -- he handles the big printout whenever a new issue comes home.

Rather than make me have to wait to start mailing issues out until he gets home, he's printing the labels out now.

He's also posting the information about the new issue on the magazine's site. Already the free-to-read articles are posted, as well as the table of contents and all that.

This is weird to me. Usually I follow the Jewish idea of not decorating the nursery until there's an actual physical baby to put in it, which translates for me into not advertising the new issue until it actually comes home from the hospital. Printer. Whatever.

So to ease my sense of strangeness, I decided to do a little giveaway, like the ones I've seen on other sites.

I'm giving away a free copy of the new issue.

Between now and the time that said new issue actually arrives safe and sound in my living room, people can post here if they want to enter the contest.

Tell me in your posting something about the new issue -- which article from the table of contents sounds intriguing, fer instance. Why you want a copy. Something like that.

If you post (with a link) about the giveaway on your blog or a forum or loop or group or something, you can post again here for another shot at winning.

If you post somewhere about the new issue coming out and link to the magazine's site, you can post here again for another shot at winning.

I'll be using a random number generator to choose, so the more times you're able to post here, the better your chance of winning.

The winner can live anywhere in the world -- I'll shell out for international postage on this one. This being the international issue, that seems fitting.

I’ll post the very second the magazine comes home, and let you know who won.

Best of luck from

Deborah the Sleepy Editor.

Okay, whose idea was this?

So I was waiting at the printers' shop. I'd tucked a book into my purse, because I always tuck a book in my purse. In the old days, I would do this because I like to read and don't like being bored. These days, I have those reasons plus the fact that, given how many book reviews and researched articles I'm working toward on any given day, any seventeen seconds that I could spend reading rather than staring idly at the back of the person in front of me is seventeen seconds it would be a mortal crime to squander.

I have several internationally themed articles gathered for this about-to-be-born issue that there weren't room for, so there will soon be another international issue of SHM. However, I've had my heart set on the next issue being what I first thought of as the Darwin issue, and then the science issue, and now the critical-thinking issue. This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species and the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Darwin's birth, and there've been a slew of books released to honor both occasions. I'd like to review a lot of them.

I also was lucky enough to interview Sid Fleischman, and had a wonderful talk about children's writing, magic, skepticism, and critical thinking. I promised him that this interview would appear in the same issue with all the Darwin articles, and he was pleased.

And I have some products from the always-wonderful Critical Thinking Company to review.

Should keep me busy.

So, with all this in mind, I tucked a mass-market copy of The Origin of Species into my purse as I set out to drop off the order for issue #6. This particular edition of Origin is specifically geared toward teenagers, and I intend to write about how well it manages to make Darwin's writing accessible to young modern scholars.

There was a line, and only one man working at the front. He looked rather harassed. I smiled to let him know that there was no hurry at all so far as I was concerned, and to back up this point, pulled out my book and began to read.

At last I was next in line, and as I glanced idly up to see what kind of order the man before me had, I saw not the usual business cards or convention flyers, but a book called Biblical Counseling.

Now, plenty of people are fine with the Bible and with Darwin. I'm just saying: I've never been at the printers' place long enough to have to wait in line at all, and I've never seen anyone there ordering copies of religious materials, and the juxtaposition was kind of cute, so far as I was concerned. I wasn't quite up to asking what anyone else thought of it.

It was also rather adorable that the people behind the counter don't always understand what exactly it is I'm ordering, because although to me it's a magazine, to them it's not. I've never yet been able to figure out what I ought to call my order. Plus I can never remember the details of what weight of paper I want, saddle stitching or the alternative, and so on. So I've fallen into the habit of bringing along a copy of the last issue, so they can see what they did last time and take it from there.

So as I got to the front of the line, I handed the man behind the counter my disk. Mr. Biblical Counseling was still right there, having stepped aside a bit to make room for me but still getting his order together.

"Hi," I said (not to him). "I'm here to order several hundred copies of SECULAR Homeschooling." And I hauled out the sample issue and waved it around.

I didn't do anything half so loud or obvious. Sure felt like it, though.

The guy behind the counter was having a hard enough day, so when he asked me when I needed the order done by, I didn't say anything about how my heathen readers needed to get their copies before the next Quickening. I just asked how soon he thought he could get it done for me, and he said maybe possibly we really really hope Tuesday.

So here's hoping.

Here's also hoping that same guy isn't picking up his order at the same time, because as my husband pointed out, there's always the danger that our mutual life forces might cancel one another out.

And now I'm going to go clean everything in my apartment that hasn't gotten cleaned this past month because I've been writing, rewriting, editing, proofreading, screaming, and whimpering.

Crowning

Red-inking the proofs. And finishing up the children's section. It's the last bit we lay in, so I can do it at the absolute last second. Though I haven't ever been quite so last-second as this before.

Wondering if I'm an idiot for committing myself to writing an ongoing story. In my fiction-writing past, I liked the sense of continuity that a long piece gave me. Now I'm going into a minor but definite panic every time I work on it. Can I finish this? Will it be worth reading?

Going to the printers tonight.

[whimper]

I am exhausted to the point that I'd volunteer for a relatively minor gunshot wound just for the chance to lie down and do nothing for a while.

I'm almost done with this issue.

It's flippin' HUGE.

I can't even tell if it's any good. I have no perspective at ALL at this point.

I just put the letters column together. All these funny, heartening love letters from people I've never even met.

Yeah, this job is worth it.

I'm waking up to dirty dishes tomorrow, but that's worth it, too, in a stinky kind of way.

Bad words (or, Nuh-uh!)

Okay, the upcoming issue is pulling together pretty quickly now, and I'm finding myself taking necessary brain breaks by posting here about every darling little thing I run into along the way. It helps clear my head. It helps me feel like I'm in touch with the big outside world.

Most of all, it helps me fight against what may be some weird virtual rumor going around that Secular Homeschooling Magazine is going down the drain.

NUH-UH!

I haven't heard anything like this myself; but our advertising guru had someone on the phone who was initially interested in placing an ad with us, but then decided against doing so, claiming that we were said to be going out of business rapidly. She'd heard this on the Internet, she said. Some blogs had some pretty dire things to say about our future, apparently.

Okay, clearly I have to lay off all the rhymes-with-itching I do about my job. Because the only blog I can think of that doom-and-glooms about the magazine is, well, this one.

But the thing is, the more I complain, the more I'm doing, you know? It's just blowing off steam. Worry when I'm not kvetching.

So: SHM is alive and well. Tell your friends.

But that's not what I came here to fret about.

I came to ask your opinion.

Our local homeschooling support group was recently joined by a really lovely family -- a mother and her breathtakingly brilliant eight-year-old son. IQ off the charts -- you know the type. Adorable. He's the sort who really likes talking to grownups, and he seems to have taken a shine to me; so we've talked a lot lately. He mentioned excitedly that he's been reading SHM. Turns out they take classes at the same music school we do, and I leave reading copies of SHM in the waiting room (marked up with twenty pounds of ink and stickers to the effect that these are the property of the school and for reading on location only, which doesn't stop them from being snitched now and then).

"So, what have you been reading in it?" I asked, hoping for some feedback on the serial children's story I've been running for a couple of issues.

He looked at me solemnly. "'Talking to Our Children About Death,'" he intoned.

Oh.

"Did you like it?" I said, and immediately gave myself a special award for Stupidest Question Ever. With a pretty Nice Choice Of Words, Moron ribbon to go with it.

He did like it, actually. But the conversation made me realize that, wow, the kids are reading my magazine.

Which leads me to a silly question, but I'd love your feedback on it.

I got a homeschool horror story for the column of the same name, and it involves a little boy saying an Official Naughty Word.

Having just had that conversation with another little boy, I decided to wimp out and use the first two letters and a dash in lieu of the complete naughtiness.

Am I a dork?

Is this really going to help anybody, since any kid who already knows the word, well, already knows the word; and the ones who don't will demand that their parents tell them what it is, undoubtedly netting me much love and affection from the homeschooling community?

I have to admit that it's partly me, because it's one of those naughty words I don't like just because I've never liked the sound of it. Or the imagery it brings with it. It's not the mother of all swear words; I just don't like it. I'll substitute another word for it in my own speech (often in the same sentence as the mother of all baddies, which nets me some strange looks from listeners).

But the homeschool horror story is fantastic. I really want it.

Are my readers going to read the column, see the abbreviation, and lose all respect for me -- the woman they thought was a big tough editor, who turned out to be a wee little pansy instead?

When it's good to be an editor

I pretty much would always rather be a writer than an editor. So it always surprises me just how much pleasure can be found in the editing part of my job.

I'm frantically pulling together the soon-to-be-current issue, and just picked a couple of poems by a young writer named Leah Heywood for the "Home Scholars" section. It was difficult to make a choice, since Leah's poems are so good. She's fourteen, and has been writing since pretty much ever; and she decided to publish a book of her work with Lulu. I got wind of this and ran over to take a look, and have been enjoying myself since my own copy of said book arrived in the mail.

I got permission to use a few poems in the magazine, and it was difficult to decide which I should use. Some are funny, some thoughtful, some wistful, some sad. All are very, very good. Not good considering they're by a young writer. Just plain good.

One poem, I knew I absolutely had to include. Not because it was necessarily better than the others, but because of the subject matter.

Growing up, I was a very bookish girl in a very unbookish suburb. Which was bad enough. But I also had (and have) a non-stop imaginary universe going on that admirers of the Brontes may understand. The various worlds spinning in my mind were far more precious to me than the so-called real one.

I tried explaining this once or twice, but I only ever got funny looks or worse. So I kept this huge part of my existence to myself -- but I never stopped looking for some clue that I wasn't the only one who walked in several worlds at once.

Reading a biography of the Brontes was a thrill, because not only did four children in one family have this state of mind, but three of them were geniuses. I was surprised, while reading Edith Wharton's autobiography, to come across a brief chapter about her own inner universe, which was (in nature if not in details) very much like my own. And I was thrown across the room when I read Edith Olivier's The Love Child, which was not only by a pretender (as I called my tribe), but was a novel about one.

So at least I wasn't the only one. But I didn't learn that until I was an adult.

It would have meant so much to me to have known as a child that I wasn't insane or alone.

And so when I came across Leah Heywood's poem "Unseen Friends," about how, when other company is wanting, Leah will go and socialize with people in her mind, I knew immediately that I had to run it. Fly the flag for some other lonely bookish sort: you're not the only one who cares as much (or more) about the people who exist only in your mind as you do about the ones everyone can see. We're a small clan, but a real one.

Now, if you haven't already, go write down some of the conversations you have with your inside friends, because I can tell you from experience that decades from now, you'll be happy you did.

And who knows? Maybe someone else will be glad, too.

Don=?ISO-8859-1?B?uQ==?=t you love a happy ending?

So I called my son in to where I was reading all the comments posted to the last rant.

"Come here," I said. "I want you to see what your siblings are up to."

Since he's biologically an only child, he approached warily. And since for the past few hours I've been wondering out loud whether it's not too late for me to be childless by choice and give the lizard the newly spare bedroom, he approached really warily.

But then he started reading over my shoulder, and soon we were both giggling like loons at what his brothers and sisters under the skin are up to, all over the homeschooling world.

PERSPECTIVE, it's called.

Why do I flip out so much about what even I know are small things when I can tell myself -- and know that it's absolutely true -- that what I'm really upset about is:

my own health stuff;

the fact that I feel like a failure for living in this apartment, though recent real estate events in California should be making me feel better about that -- but I still get to have the daily self-inflicted guilt that I can't give my kid a yard or a garden;
the fact that I'm juggling a lot of stuff, and it's weird to love my work and my family so much and yet wish at times that they'd all go away and leave me alone (preferably trapped in the bathtub with a box of See's buttercreams, a stack of good novels, an unlimited supply of hot water, and no personal ambition whatsoever);

and most of all, the fact that I've been jittery about our homeschooling for some time, wondering if I'm going to kill the love of learning if I don't unschool, terrified that I'll have him growing up and blaming me for what I didn't teach him if I do, and wishing someone would just come along and give me the answers with all the brilliance of impossible hindsight.

So of course something had to blow.

I wake up to too many things to do that still feel terrifyingly new. Everything does.

Cooking, for example. My son went veggie years ago; my husband was assaulted by a slew of adult onset food allergies at about the same time, and all of a sudden I had to cook without meat, fish, chicken, tomatoes, avocados, fruit of any kind, chocolate, vinegar, buttermilk, alcohol of any kind -- and for a while there, he would suffer a breath-threatening allergy attack if he had food that I'd cooked yesterday, instead of fresh today. Something about the tiniest touch of fermentation just set him off -- and he's not the diva type, he really isn't. No dramatics at the dinner table. Just glancing over and seeing his lips quietly starting to swell, and here we go: what killer ingredient managed to slip in, in spite of all my best efforts? So every week, when I sit down and think about what to buy and prepare, the stress level is never any lower for me. I don't get to cook whatever sounds good, or what's on sale, or what I feel like; I get to try to cook something that won't kill or offend anyone. No wonder I feel hungry all the time.

And then there's the laundry. Stupid, I know; but really kind of stressful. All of a sudden, just for the past month or two, every week my neighbors have started to change their "routines" in our communal laundry room. I used to have a handle on who did how much when. Now I never know if I can get a quick load in before we run out for French class or park day, or if I'm out of luck and maybe I can try again later. I can't just run down in the middle of the night; the laundry room shares a wall with an apartment, and after ten or before six it's emergencies only, please.

And then the homeschooling. One day it feels as if we need to have a schedule and stick to it. Like my friend, who just wrote up such a document for her family that my son, who's always been a little in awe of her and her brilliant children, is now positively intimidated. Why am I so scared of that kind of organizational skill? My mother-in-law has it, and I love her and am so grateful for everything she does for us and yet every time I see her I have to come home and mess things up a bit, just to get the scent of that killing efficiency off me. She comes over and sees my calendars still sitting on February four days into March, and I can see her trying not to wince too visibly. I find myself clinging harder than ever to "we do what we feel like around here, not what we're supposed to do because it's Tuesday." And then panicking because it's Tuesday and I really don't know what we should be doing.

Some days I feel like a character in a novel I never read -- I only saw the review. It was a strange book about, among other things, a baby girl who died because her parents decided to experiment on her by calling her a new, different name every day.

What's wrong with me? Why can't I just get it all together and figure it out?

You know, like everybody else has?

(pause for sound of uproarious laughter from the entire homeschooling community and/or world)

So this morning, after I was done flipping out, my son came in with the document he'd quietly drawn up. It reads as follows:
 
Partly-unschooling Schedule
When I get up (not later than 7:30), you assign all the work I need to do. I take it to my room, and figure out when I will do it.
I eat breakfast.
I start doing work. When finished, I ask any questions I have.
When I finish everything, including instruments and languages, I have the rest of the day free to do whatever.
 
"Whatever." I like that.

We talked about that a little. Would it be better to do Latin for half an hour a few days a week, or fifteen minutes every day? (Fifteen minutes, we decided for various reasons. Ditto French.)

We talked about sitting down on Sundays and discussing what the week ahead will hold. I'd like to be able to go to museums at least a couple of times a month. I'd like to keep teaching science to him with his friends, the way we've been doing a couple of times a month, but he has to help me out because it's a lot of work, especially when I'm not feeling well.

Let's get the Life of Fred math books and see if he likes them. Let's keep getting lots of books about animals and American history from the library, because he does like them. Let's finish reading Johnny Tremain and start either Oliver Twist or The Prince and the Pauper.

And the exercise question? I need to be able to exercise inside sometimes. But it would be nice if we went out together for morning walks -- we do have an ocean close enough to walk to -- and, if we save up a bit, I can get some running shoes and he can get an inexpensive bike we saw at Costco. That would be fun for both of us.

Which, as Idzie pointed out very kindly and correctly in reply to my blundering unschooling statements, is supposed to be what this is about.

Wish me luck.

Throwing the homeschooling tantrum

I'm just surprised that some of the other tenants in our apartment building haven't called the cops by now.

Why haven't they? I would have, if I'd heard the kind of stomping around, slamming, and yelling that I've been doing. Especially at eight in the morning.

Yup. I'm that special kind of homeschooler.

I woke up feeling just okay. Which is not wonderful, because I feel like I barely got done with my last batch of not okayness. I'm not ready to throw myself into the next bout of ickiness.

I had creeping nausea and creeping pain last night, and that creeps me out more than the real thing sometimes. I hate that whole hinting about how much worse things could be that my body decides to freak me out with sometimes.

I didn't get any exercise yesterday, and I really needed to today. I should be exercising whenever I can, to get strong in any way I can on any day I feel up to it. There are too many days I don't.

My husband left for work around 7:20. My son was up already, a little unusual for him. I decided to go ahead and stake out the living room, which is about the size of a paper towel, for my own use.

Go read, I said. Go work on your handwriting. Go learn your poem.

The handwriting is not conventional cursive. It's Penny Gardner's connected cursive stuff. I don't have time to go and look at exactly what it's called. I'm too busy seething.

I got the Penny Gardner thing because my son was really struggling with the other kind, and I wanted to help him out. As long as he can read regular handwriting, I don't mind if he doesn't write it. I do find joined-up writing to be a timesaver myself, so I'd like him to have the option of using it. So we use this system.

The reading is a lovely book I bought secondhand about life at both the poles. Pictures of polar bears and musk oxen and all kinds of fun stuff. He's been enjoying it.

The poem is that six-line piece by Sandberg about the fog coming in on little cat feet.

Not exactly hardship stuff, here. All tailored to his interests and needs.

Now, please go away and let me exercise.

"Can I check my email?"

Fine. Go.

I'm about seven minutes into it and finally starting to feel okay. I've started later than I'd have liked to, but it's okay. The stuff we have to do today is flexible, time-wise.

Little feet behind me.

What?

"Does looking at the poem count as part of my reading time?"

It's not just the inherent whininess of the question, or the fact that we already talked about that -- that I'd like him to read for, say, about fifteen minutes, which I thought would be a nice gentle way to start the day and wake up his brain; and then he should look at his poem for as long as he needed to, since he's halfway to having it memorized already.

What pushed me over the edge is that I'm hearing this kind of thing every day.

I used to be a live-in nanny. The kids I worked with were great. They understood that the house rules were different depending on who was in charge at any given time. If Mommy or Daddy were home, it was their place. Otherwise, it was mine.

If it was my place, there was a much higher chance of scoring some serious goofing off, tickle battles, playing with the hose in the backyard, and general silliness, because I enjoy that kind of thing. I don't enjoy fighting about food, however, so here's your sandwich and please have some fruit and when you're done you can have some cookies and this isn't subject to negotiation. It's all food you like, so I don't want to argue about it.

They thought that was fine. They sat down, polished off their lunch, asked for seconds if they were still hungry, and ran off to play when they were done.

Mommy and Daddy, on the other hand, were not so much into the goofing off; but they allowed constant discussion about food. So every dinnertime turned into "How many bites of this do I have to have?" "Does this count as a bite?" "How many more bites do I have to have?"

I found this to be sheer torture, and didn't understand why we should have to live with it.

I don't see why I should have to live with it now, either.

"Do I have to do this? How long do I have to do that?"

We're studying stuff he ASKED to study. But apparently he's reserving the right to whine about it. Incessantly.

I work. I'm way behind on work as we speak. I cannot keep having my energy and will to live sucked away by this nonstop bickering we're engaged in.

I've considered unschooling, but all the unschoolers I know:

a) have huge big natural-type places, farms or houses in the forest or whatever, where the kids can roam around learning about life and nature in a very organic way, whereas my child would be struck by a speeding car or murdered by a deranged homeless person if he tried a cute stunt like wandering freely;

b) have lots of time and energy to invest in an enriching environment.
 

I have work and health issues to deal with. I can honestly say that I just wouldn't be able to do the kind of work really good unschooling requires. I consider unschooling at its best to be the highest possible form of education, but I don't think I can do it. Not where and how we're situated.

So maybe we're just not organized enough. Maybe this halfway-unschooling stuff is just ridiculous. Maybe if I had some online learning thing that he knew he had to go do, assignments already laid out for him to complete, it would be easier for all of us. I could work, work out, get stuff done. He'd be learning, and wouldn't have time to harass me.

I went online to look at an online curriculum someone had mentioned to me as working well for them. I tried one of the sample lessons. It just didn't feel like a good fit.

Maybe I should give it another chance. Or find something else like it.

Hell, maybe I should just pack him off to that school down the street. It would solve the free time issue and the work problems, since I'd be out of a job and he'd be out of the house.

I don't know. I'm trying so hard to tailor things to his needs and wants, and I'm just ready to quit. I'm so tired. I've got so much to do.

I've HAD it with being treated as if my wanting to exercise is the most decadent form of self-indulgence any parent ever dared to attempt to lay hold of.

My son's actually pretty cute, if you like that kind of thing. And with other people, he can be really nice. He's getting old enough to even be useful, if you give him specific instructions.

You want him?